This week I’m presenting a paper for the Harvard NeuroDiscovery Center’s Journal Club. Those who have attended these presentations in the past will know that these journal club sessions are little more structured than many people will be used to. The format is for the presenting grad student or postdoc to present the paper in a semi-formal PowerPoint presentation; then, after the initial presentation, two faculty co-hosts broaden the topic by either relating the presented paper to their own work or by addressing the broader themes of the paper. The paper presenter is responsible for finding two faculty co-hosts who have the relevant expertise, as well as the time and inclination to present at the journal club.

As I am not very well connected at Harvard it was a little time-consuming for me to find appropriate faculty hosts. However, things became a lot easier for anyone considering a similar endeavor on September 4th (about a week to late for me!) when the Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center launched the ‘Harvard Catalyst’ portal (http://catalyst.harvard.edu).

This nifty website lists all Harvard faculty and researchers with scientific and clinical areas of expertise, including those of all the teaching hospitals associated with Harvard. The design of the site encourages the exploration of the existing collaborative networks within the Harvard Medical community. A search for a particular person yields not only their contact details and publication history but also includes links to those at Harvard with whom they have published, as well as people within their department and (that which would have been most useful for me), a list of ‘similar people’ i.e. those with similar research interests and areas of expertise.

There is also ‘Medvane’ an automated bibliome mining tool that collates info from Pubmed where at least one of the authors has a Harvard affiliation. The data can be searched in a number of ways including a search for your ‘favorite’ gene. The site also includes information about relevant Harvard taught courses and research funding opportunities. However, the main aim of the site seems to be to facilitate cross-collaboration between the various schools and hospitals of Harvard and in this context I think that Harvard Catalyst will be a valuable resource.

Moving a laboratory is kind of like moving houses when you’re a kid – basically you have no say in whether the move goes ahead or not. This can render a lot of researchers reluctant to move, especially when there is a lot of equipment involved and when the current space seems to working just fine. I generally enjoy change, so I’m happy to move. Also, one of the advantages of being in a small lab is that we don’t have tons of equipment to move and, after a well-needed purge, we only have small amounts of chemicals and other nasties that require transporting.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve watched as the rest of my department slowly disappeared from my floor and moved to a new building over the road. Our lab was the last to move which meant that we spent a little time rattling around a largely empty floor. Whilst this provided great opportunities for desk chair and packing crate/dolly races (opportunities, I hasten to add, that were not acted upon) it also felt very strange and could have easily affected motivation for experiments in the lab if we had let it.

Now its our turn to move after having spent the last four days packing up the lab. I’m hanging out at the new place waiting for the movers to arrive with our stuff whilst our technician Liz is waiting at the ‘old lab’ for the movers to return from lunch and actually pick up the stuff. Its not the most efficient way of doing things but small glitches can be forgiven on move day – as long as nothing gets broken or lost, then there’ll be trouble…

By JoVE! (how can I resist the opportunity to use such a quaint English expression?!)

Aside from another name for the Roman god Jupiter, I found out yesterday that JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments) is an online, freely available, video database of experimental techniques. Now in its 4th issue, JoVE aims to address poor reproducibility of biological studies by bridging the gap between the methods sections of scientific papers and physical demonstrations of how to perform a technique. Currently arranged in five sub-sections, the site contains video footage of researchers performing advanced experimental techniques in Neuroscience, Developmental Biology, Cellular Biology, Microbiology and Plant Biology.

I thought it odd to call the site a ‘journal’ (opposed to ‘archive’ or ‘database’); especially because, at the moment, submissions are not peer-reviewed. Instead, ideas for submissions go through an associate editor with expertise in the field (there are some well-known names on the editorial board). According to the Editor-in-Chief Moshe Pritsker (speaking yesterday at a HMS postdoctoral association event) the journal format is to encourage submission of ideas and participation in the process by current researchers (its worth noting that JoVE will videotape and edit the final piece and so the researcher is not required to have skills in this area). There are certainly benefits to submitting videotaped experiments to the site, if the take-up rate is good then your expertise in a particular technique will be widely disseminated. Also, having a visual recording of a procedure may help to establish a standard operating procedure and contribute to more effective comparison of experiments between labs separated by distance.

Will people submit details of novel procedures to JoVE? Progress in biology is founded on the dissemination of ideas and techniques, and in theory, once a technique is published it is in the public domain unless patented. However, brief methods sections in written journals can potentially ‘buy time’ so that a lab pioneering the new technique does not lose its leading edge. In addition, publishing a less detailed methods section in the context of a full scientific paper can encourage interested parties to contact the lab that has published the technique and this may potentially lead to useful collaborations. It is likely to be difficult for JoVE to establish the kind of reputation that will encourage scientists to submit reports of novel techniques, and it may be that this idea of a visual record of experiments will be appropriated by the more established journals. How long before ‘print’ journals go multimedia and each technical article contains a weblink to the video record of the experiment?

All random speculations and theoretical considerations aside, I think that JoVE will become a useful resource because, as far as I can tell, the detailed demonstrations are of a good standard. Whilst video will not replace quality one-to-one tuition it’s still really useful for anyone who wants to check out a technique, in detail, before getting hands-on. Most people that I’ve showed it to far seem pretty impressed too. Check it out at: www.jove.com

At the beginning of this year an email was sent around our university mailing list advertising the services of ‘Mentornet’ an e-mentoring website. As the only non-Chinese speaking and female postdoc in my immediate working environment I thought that this may potentially be an opportunity for me to open lines of communication with a more experienced female academic who may offer advice and support in an environment lacking in day-to-day interactions with people that I am able to directly relate to. Six months after posting my plea on the site I now have a mentor, a male professor at the University of Hyderabad, so not exactly the demographic that I was aiming for. However, as with most decisions there was more than one reason for my seeking a ‘virtual’ mentor, not least that I am extremely curious about most things and have always had an interest in education. In taking a virtual mentor I hope to learn more about what makes a ‘good’ mentor; if an individual can provide support, relevant feedback and help trigger meaningful thoughts and ideas from across the ether then what are the techniques used to do this? How can these techniques be used in a traditional mentor/protegee or supervisor/student relationship? I hope one day to have students of my own (somehow that sentence has changed since I was younger!) and realise that the workload of an academic supervisor is heavy; therefore probably the only way to deal with a high number of responsibilities (if delegating is not an option) is to increase effeciency and effectiveness.

The e-mentoring relationship is going pretty well so far, the only problem that we’ve encountered is that I’m not able to keep up with the frequency of his emails! I’m currently taking a week of vacation back in England and therefore, as usual, the week before my departure was even more hectic than normal; this was compounded by the fact that we now have a new research assistant in the lab for the summer (woo-hoo! – more on this later) who needed training so that she could work independently whilst I’m away. E-mentor is a computational biologist/biophysist and therefore his work is somewhat removed from my own, I’m pleased about this and am looking forward to discussing science that differs from the work that I discuss with my boss on a regular basis. In addition, e-mentor has already made a number of interesting points that I’d like to discuss with him further – now I just need to find the time when I’m back in the lab! Of course there are cultural differences as well and I hope that my e-mentoring relationship will help me learn more about them. One interesting thing that was mentioned was the concept of the postdoctoral period almost as a time of ‘earning your stripes’ and performing work at the command of your boss without opportunity to develop your own ideas, so that the postdoctoral period is something to ‘escape’ from. Although there are subscribers to this philosophy I personally disagree with it (and hope to still do so when I have my own lab!); of course, your work must fit in with the interests of the lab in which you work but if your boss is merely looking for hands to execute his own experiments then he should be hiring a research assistant and not a postdoc. Based on the comments of e-mentor and my own experience I think that maybe we have a more ‘progressive’ approach to postdoctoral freedom in the UK and US than in India. Any comments on this?

Science can be an isolating profession, even more so if you’re a postdoc working alone. ‘Notes from a Small Lab’ is my attempt to reach out into the ether and connect with the Bostonian and Global scientific community at large. Of course, I’m not entirely alone. I work alongside a research assistant but she’s currently away for a month, re-acquainting herself with friends and relatives in China after five years in the US. I have a PI who is wonderfully supportive and accessible but is also a clinician who no longer does bench work. Our little lab collaborates with a number of other labs and luckily the main collaborator for my work is also in the Longwood Medical Area (LMA). Nonetheless, it was a bit of a shock when I arrived here from a large, well established lab at Oxford a little over a year ago.

So why did I take this position, my first postdoc, in such a small lab? Firstly, the work seemed interesting; I think that’s the most important prerequisite for any job regardless of the field. Secondly, in the telephone interviews my potential PI seemed to be someone with a lot of good ideas but who wasn’t averse to listening to the ideas of others (obviously, I checked his publication record too!). Thirdly, after coming from a large lab in which the PI is already well known in the field, I thought it would be useful for my career to be part of a relatively new lab, to hopefully play a key role in establishing the lab and to learn and participate in the various stages of establishing and expanding a laboratory. Finally, the whole BIDMC/Harvard thing wasn’t exactly a turn-off!

I plan to use this blog to post science news that I find interesting in the hope of stimulating interest and discussion, and also to flag resources that I’ve found particularly useful myself. In addition to musings on the generalities of postdoc life I plan to offer any insights that I think I may have pertaining to transitions from the UK to the US and also, as time goes on, transitions through the various stages of the research career path. I hope that you enjoy reading it.